Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Half an hour past twelve midnight of the first day of this year, when all the noise and revelry is about to die down, I started rereading Lolita. I thought, what better way to start 2008 but with this Nabokov masterpiece? Driven by my love of books and—to quote William Styron--my “veneration of the printed word as a source of wisdom, redemption and refuge,” I then spent the rest of the year devouring one book after another, some for the first time and some for the nth. As of today, I’ve read forty-three novels--and except for an odd few--all of which I highly recommend.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1950)

TarBaby, Toni Morrison ((1981)

White Noise, Don DeLillo (1984)

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Anderson (2006)

Seabiscuit: An American Legend, Laura Hillenbrand (2001)

A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar (1998)

Jazz, Toni Morrison (1992)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (1847)

Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847)

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion, Ford Maddox Ford (1997)

Underworld, Don DeLillo ((1997)

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson (1980)

The Human Stain, Philip Roth (2000)

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1877)

Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)

Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck (1935)

Independence Day, Richard Ford (1995)

Sabbath’s Theater, Philip Roth (1995)

Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes (1996)

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)

The Dying Animal, Philip Roth (2001)

Women In Love, D.H. Lawrence (1920)

Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (1915)

Empire Falls, Richard Russo (2001)

Martha Quest, Doris Lessing (1952)

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (1895)

Howards End, E.M. Forster (1910)

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)

Emma, Jane Austen (1816)

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929)

Memories of the Ford Administration, John Updike (1992)

Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1939)

Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth (1959)

All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1946)

Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)

The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton (1975)

USA Volume 3: The Big Money, John Dos Passos (1927)

Run River, Joan Didion (1963)

Falconer, John Cheever (1975)

I’m now reading Henry James’ The Ambassadors. Not liking it that much, I hope to finish it by the end of the year.

so weird, i was thinking of reading jane eyre this morning, but im in the throes of an obsessive complusive clutch. if i start reading a certain author, i have to read all of their work. so i'm nearly done with rice (i'm pathetically slow ha-ha) then i have thomas harris or maybe i'll start on the book set that Rik gave me of Jane Austen. decisions decisions.